Economic and population growth on top of climate change could lead to serious water shortages across a broad swath of Asia by the year 2050, a newly published study by MIT scientists has found.
The study deploys detailed modeling to produce what the researchers believe is a full range of scenarios involving water availability and use in the future. In the paper, the scientists conclude there is a "high risk of severe water stress" in much of an area that is home to roughly half the world's population.
Having run a large number of simulations of future scenarios, the researchers find that the median amounts of projected growth and climate change in the next 35 years in Asia would lead to about 1 billion more people becoming "water-stressed" compared to today.
And while climate change is expected to have serious effects on the water supply in many parts of the world, the study underscores the extent to which industrial expansion and population growth may by themselves exacerbate water-access problems.
"It's not just a climate change issue," says Adam Schlosser, a senior research scientist and deputy director at MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and a co-author of the study. "We simply cannot ignore that economic and population growth in society can have a very strong influence on our demand for resources and how we manage them. And climate, on top of that, can lead to substantial magnifications to those stresses."
The paper, "Projections of Water Stress Based on an Ensemble of Socioeconomic Growth and Climate Change Scenarios: A Case Study in Asia," is being published today in the journal PLOS One. The lead author is Charles Fant, a researcher at the Joint Program. The other co-authors are Schlosser; Xiang Gao and Kenneth Strzepek, who are also researchers at the Joint Program; and John Reilly, a co-director of the Joint Program who is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Teasing out human and environmental factors
To conduct the study, the scientists built upon an existing model developed previously at MIT, the Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM), which contains probabilistic projections of population growth, economic expansion, climate, and carbon emissions from human activity. They then linked the IGSM model to detailed models of water use for a large portion of Asia encompassing China, India, and many smaller nations.
The scientists then ran an extensive series of repeated projections using varying conditions. In what they call the "Just Growth" scenario, they held climate conditions constant and evaluated the effects of economic and population growth on the water supply. In an alternate "Just Climate" scenario, the scientists held growth constant and evaluated climate-change effects alone. And in a "Climate and Growth" scenario, they studied the impact of rising economic activity, growing populations, and climate change.
Approaching it this way gave the researchers a "unique ability to tease out the human [economic] and environmental" factors leading to water shortages and to assess their relative significance, Schlosser says.
This kind of modeling also allowed the group to assess some of the particular factors that affect the different countries in the region to varying extents.
"For China, it looks like industrial growth [has the greatest impact] as people get wealthier," says Fant. "In India, population growth has a huge effect. It varies by region."
The researchers also emphasize that evaluating the future of any area's water supply is not as simple as adding the effects of economic growth and climate change, and it depends on the networked water supply into and out of that area. The model uses a network of water basins, and as Schlosser notes, "What happens upstream affects downstream basins." If climate change lowers the amount of rainfall near upstream basins while the population grows everywhere, then basins farther away from the initial water shortage would be affected more acutely.
Future research directions
The research team is continuing to work on related projects, including one on the effects of mitigation on water shortages. While those studies are not finished, the researchers say that changing water-use practices can have significant effects.
"We are assessing the extent to which climate mitigation and adaptation practices -- such as more efficient irrigation technologies -- can reduce the future risk of nations under high water stress," Schlosser says. "Our preliminary findings indicate strong cases for effective actions and measures to reduce risk."
The researchers say they will continue to look at ways of fine-tuning their modeling in order to refine their likelihood estimates of significant water shortages in the future.
"The emphasis in this work was to consider the whole range of plausible outcomes," Schlosser says. "We consider this an important step in our ability to identify the sources of changing risk and large-scale solutions to risk reduction."
Source:Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Although it's long been suspected that human activity has greatly contributed to environmental stress, it's only recently that science has begun to show just how great a role that activity is playing.
In an article published in the journal Nature Climate Change, Michigan State University's Thomas Dietz and his colleague, Eugene Rosa of Washington State University, take a critical look at the various factors that have long been prime climate-change suspects. One in particular: The role of population growth.
"How does population growth influence greenhouse gas emissions?" Dietz asks. "Well, in looking at most nations of the world during the last few decades we find that for each 1 percent increase in population, we get a bit more than a 1 percent increase in emissions."
And with Earth's population projected to reach 10 billion by the end of this century, "it unquestionably will add to the stress we place on the planet," Dietz said.
Until recently, climate-change debate had focused on whether it was brought about by human activity. Recently that debate has shifted to what sorts of activities are creating it.
"No single factor acts independently of the others," said Dietz, a professor of sociology and environmental science and policy, and assistant vice president for environmental research. "The effect of population size depends on consumption; the effects of consumption depend on how many people are consuming at that level."
Another factor that has sparked climate-change debate focuses on how affluent a nation is. On one hand it's argued that more affluent nations use more resources, thus creating more emissions.
On the other hand, citizens of more affluent nations tend to be more socially conscious and are willing to work and pay for a cleaner environment.
"For example," Dietz said, "increased use of electricity generated by renewable sources that do not emit greenhouse gases might partially or wholly compensate for the tendency toward increased emissions that come with increased affluence."
Dietz and Rosa write that they are not optimistic about the future, calling the paper they did "sobering."
"The population and economic growth that can be anticipated in coming decades will tend to push emissions substantially upward," they wrote.
The only possible saving grace, they say, is improved technology and changes in the way humans use resources.
"However, these changes will need to be huge because they must counter substantial increases in scale coming from population growth and especially increasing affluence.".
Source:Michigan State University

The environmental movement is making a difference -- nudging greenhouse gas emissions down in states with strong green voices, according to a Michigan State University (MSU) study.
Social scientist Thomas Dietz and Kenneth Frank, MSU Foundation professor of sociometrics, have teamed up to find a way to tell if a state jumping on the environmental bandwagon can mitigate other human factors -- population growth and economic affluence -- known to hurt the environment.
"We've used new methods developed over the years and new innovations Ken has developed to add in the politics -- and find that politics and environmentalism can mediate some environmental impact," Dietz said. "Environmentalism seems to influence policies and how well policies that are in place are actually implemented and it also influences individual behavior and the choices people make."
The study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows a state-level win for environmental activism that hasn't been apparent on a national scale.
The authors compared greenhouse gas emissions between all 50 U.S. states and within each state over time going back to 1990, and determined how emissions correlated with population, gross state product per capita, employment rate, and environmentalism. They calculated environmentalism by the environmental voting record of a state's congressional delegation, as rated by the League of Conservation Voters.
The combined influences of population and affluence have been regarded as the core of environmental stress -- and have tended to guarantee an annual increase in carbon dioxide emissions. But the paper "Political influences on greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. states" adds what the MSU researchers say is an important layer to understanding human impact on climate change. They show that a 1 percent increase in environmentalism tends to reduce emissions by more than enough to compensate for the typical annual increase in emissions.
"Efforts to mitigate emissions take a variety of forms at the state and local level and may have substantial impact even in the absence of a unified national policy," the paper notes. "Existing regulations can be applied strictly or less stringently, and programs can be pursued enthusiastically or given a low priority. Even without formal policy and programs, the importance of reducing emissions can be widely accepted by individuals and organizations and result in actions that have substantial impact."
This breakdown showed that certain states, such as New York for example, that would expected to see its increasing population and affluence bring along significantly higher carbon dioxide emissions instead saw those emissions fall thanks to politics that favored environmental protections.
Dietz and Frank offer a new way of understanding what drives humans' impact on the environment, one that both see as a first step at turning up the sensitivity of understanding how people are players in the environment's health.
Frank's sensitivity analysis parceled out whether variables comparable to a state's liberal or conservative leanings, political affiliation or number of women in the legislature, could be tipping the scales they were attributing to environmental activism.
"When doing this sensitivity analysis, we ask what it would it take to knock our results over -- a feather, an arm or a sledgehammer, and these are pretty close to sledgehammer results," Frank said. "We're finding that 44 percent of our data would have to be due to bias to shake this."
Dietz notes that understanding activism is a strong first step to understanding many kinds of environmental stresses, such as air pollution.
"We've always said this is laying the groundwork for more study. Ken came in with subtle ways to look at how the world works," Dietz said. "This is just the start of a conversation."
Source:Michigan State University

The extracellular matrix (ECM) regulates all important cell functions and is an interesting biomaterial for scientists. Fraunhofer has developed an ECM that contains artificial chemical groups which supports natural cell behaviour outside the body. It can be applied as a stable coating on implants or be used in cell culture dishes.
Biologists, chemists and physicians have to know how biological reactions occur inside the human body to be able to -- for example -- insert new implants, develop new active substances or to replace diseased tissue. The extracellular matrix (ECM) plays an important role in these researches. In human tissue it is the natural environment of cells and is responsible for important functions. Tissue specific composition makes it the ideal material for use in medical technology. "However, it is very complicated to modify the matrix in such a way that it can be adapted to different uses, but still behave naturally," says Dr. Monika Bach from the Department of Interfacial Engineering and Materials Science, in the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB.
Biological Coating in Medical Technology
The chemists and biologists at the Stuttgart research institute have worked together to develop a functional ECM, which supports natural cell behaviour even outside the body and which can be flexibly adapted to problems related to biology or to materials science. Prof. Petra Kluger, Head of the Department of Cell and Tissue Engineering, described the current state of the research as follows: "We have shown in the laboratory that the biomaterial fulfills its functions in spite of the additional artificial chemical groups and supports the natural behaviour of cells that are in contact with it." The IGB scientists are currently looking for collaborators to help them to develop specific products with the patented technology. One possibility would be to coat implants so they are more rapidly accepted by the body. According to Dr. Bach, "In principle, this technology would also be interesting to develop new materials that can be used to support healing in bones or wounds." The material could also be used to coat cell culture dishes in the laboratory. It is providing cells with an ideal environment, so that they exhibit their natural growth properties during culture. "Complex living material reacts very sensitively to even small changes in the environment," Bach explains.
Chemical Reaction that Clicks
In order to equip ECM with artificial chemical groups, the scientists exploit natural cell metabolism and let the chemical groups incorporate themselves. For this purpose, cells isolated from human tissue samples are incubated in cell culture dishes with sugar molecules which differ from normal sugars in that they have a reactive artificial chemical group at one position. The cells pick up this modified sugar and use it as a building block to assemble molecules within the cell and in the ECM. As Dr. Bach describes it, "This chemical group can then undergo a selective chemical reaction -- a click reaction -- with a suitable binding partner. Imagine it is like a fastener button: one half, the other half and then click!" The advantage of the clicking together is that the selective chemical reaction has a high yield, without side reactions and under physiological conditions, without interfering in natural cell processes.
Source:Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

It may sound like science fiction, but wastewater treatment plants across the United States may one day turn ordinary sewage into biocrude oil, thanks to new research at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The technology, hydrothermal liquefaction, mimics the geological conditions Earth uses to create crude oil, using high pressure and temperature to achieve in minutes something that takes Mother Nature millions of years. The resulting material is similar to petroleum pumped out of the ground, with a small amount of water and oxygen mixed in. This biocrude can then be refined using conventional petroleum refining operations.
Wastewater treatment plants across the U.S. treat approximately 34 billion gallons of sewage every day. That amount could produce the equivalent of up to approximately 30 million barrels of oil per year. PNNL estimates that a single person could generate two to three gallons of biocrude per year.
Sewage, or more specifically sewage sludge, has long been viewed as a poor ingredient for producing biofuel because it's too wet. The approach being studied by PNNL eliminates the need for drying required in a majority of current thermal technologies which historically has made wastewater to fuel conversion too energy intensive and expensive. HTL may also be used to make fuel from other types of wet organic feedstock, such as agricultural waste.
Using hydrothermal liquefaction, organic matter such as human waste can be broken down to simpler chemical compounds. The material is pressurized to 3,000 pounds per square inch -- nearly one hundred times that of a car tire. Pressurized sludge then goes into a reactor system operating at about 660 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat and pressure cause the cells of the waste material to break down into different fractions -- biocrude and an aqueous liquid phase.
"There is plenty of carbon in municipal waste water sludge and interestingly, there are also fats," said Corinne Drennan, who is responsible for bioenergy technologies research at PNNL. "The fats or lipids appear to facilitate the conversion of other materials in the wastewater such as toilet paper, keep the sludge moving through the reactor, and produce a very high quality biocrude that, when refined, yields fuels such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuels."
In addition to producing useful fuel, HTL could give local governments significant cost savings by virtually eliminating the need for sewage residuals processing, transport and disposal.
"The best thing about this process is how simple it is," said Drennan. "The reactor is literally a hot, pressurized tube. We've really accelerated hydrothermal conversion technology over the last six years to create a continuous, and scalable process which allows the use of wet wastes like sewage sludge."
An independent assessment for the Water Environment & Reuse Foundation calls HTL a highly disruptive technology that has potential for treating wastewater solids. WE&RF investigators noted the process has high carbon conversion efficiency with nearly 60 percent of available carbon in primary sludge becoming bio-crude. The report calls for further demonstration, which may soon be in the works.
PNNL has licensed its HTL technology to Utah-based Genifuel Corporation, which is now working with Metro Vancouver, a partnership of 23 local authorities in British Columbia, Canada, to build a demonstration plant.
"Metro Vancouver hopes to be the first wastewater treatment utility in North America to host hydrothermal liquefaction at one of its treatment plants," said Darrell Mussatto, chair of Metro Vancouver's Utilities Committee. "The pilot project will cost between $8 to $9 million (Canadian) with Metro Vancouver providing nearly one-half of the cost directly and the remaining balance subject to external funding."
Once funding is in place, Metro Vancouver plans to move to the design phase in 2017, followed by equipment fabrication, with start-up occurring in 2018.
"If this emerging technology is a success, a future production facility could lead the way for Metro Vancouver's wastewater operation to meet its sustainability objectives of zero net energy, zero odours and zero residuals," Mussatto added.
In addition to the biocrude, the liquid phase can be treated with a catalyst to create other fuels and chemical products. A small amount of solid material is also generated, which contains important nutrients. For example, early efforts have demonstrated the ability to recover phosphorus, which can replace phosphorus ore used in fertilizer production.
Source:Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

A new study of lead pollution in the North Atlantic provides strong evidence that leaded petrol emissions have declined over the past few decades.
For the first time in around 40 years, scientists have detected lead from natural sources in samples from this ocean. In the intervening period, the proportion of lead in the ocean from humanmade sources, most importantly leaded petrol emissions, had been so high that it was not possible to detect any lead from natural sources.
Trace metals such as lead are continuously recycled on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere, and are important barometers that help scientists to understand planetary processes. Scientists are particularly keen to monitor levels of lead from natural sources, such as windblown dust, and lead from humanmade sources, such as burning coal, to determine the impact of industrialisation on the planet and levels of pollution.
A team of scientists from Imperial College London, and their collaborators, analysed the chemistry of seawater samples collected from across the tropical North Atlantic in 2010 and 2011. The aim of the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, was to determine variations in the proportions of natural and humanmade lead in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean.
The scientists found that up to 50 per cent of the lead was from natural sources, which they say reflects a decrease in the amount of lead pollution emitted from combustion engines. They caution however that this finding is confined to a specific area of the ocean, which is expected to receive particularly high inputs of natural lead, and that continuing pollution from sources such as coal-burning and smelting processes are still overwhelming natural lead elsewhere in the Atlantic ocean.
Dr Luke Bridgestock, who carried out the study while doing his PhD in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial, said: "Lead pollution has never been a hazard to the health of ocean ecosystems, as it occurs in very dilute amounts in seawater. However, the proportion of lead from human activities and naturally occurring sources in the surface of our oceans reflects the extent of environmental lead pollution. That is why today's find is encouraging. It demonstrates how effective policies to phase out leaded petrol have been."
"The big catch though is that lead pollution from other sources is still high, overall remaining dominant over naturally occurring lead in the oceans."
Over the last 100 years, the North Atlantic Ocean has been heavily affected by high levels of lead pollution from the industrialised regions of North America and Europe. The primary source of this pollution has been lead emitted from car engines and other combustion engines. Starting in the 1970s, countries have introduced a raft of policies to eliminate lead additives from combustion engines. However, previous scientific expeditions since the 1970s have failed to detect any naturally occurring lead in the oceans because it was still completely masked by high levels of lead from humanmade sources.
The ocean samples in the new study were collected over a radius spanning thousands of kilometres in an area between the continents of Africa and the Americas. They were collected in 2010 and 2011 as part of the GEOTRACES programs -- an ongoing international effort to study the cycling of various trace metals in the ocean.
Dr Tina Van de Flierdt, co-author of the study from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial, added: "This is the first time since similar studies began in the late 1970s that natural lead in the ocean has been at an observable level. However, this finding is confined to this particular region of the North Atlantic and pollutant lead from industrial processes is still dominant in this ocean and elsewhere. For example, lead pollution in the Indian ocean has increased in recent times due to the economic development of countries surrounding it."
The researchers used a technique that analyses the isotopic composition of lead in the seawater samples. This helped them to determine the origin of the lead. Different isotopes of lead are produced by different radioactive decay processes, which are like fingerprints, enabling scientists to infer information about lead's journey through different environmental systems.
Analysing the lead isotope composition of seawater samples showed the team that vast plumes of windblown dust from Saharan Africa deposited naturally occurring lead in the tropical North Atlantic. It is also being transported into the ocean via the Amazon River in South America. Lead from humanmade sources was being delivered by westerly winds from industrialised North America and by easterly winds from Europe and North Africa.
Pollutants inadvertently act like dyes, enabling individual "parcels" of water to be traced as they move around the world's oceans. The next step will see the team using this principle in their research to track lead pollution as it is transported deep into the ocean. In doing so, they will be able to learn valuable information about ocean circulation patterns.
Source:Imperial College London

First, as for the global residential Brass Rods industry, the industry concentration rate is highly dispersed. The top 5 manufacturers have 30.61% sales revenue market share in 2017. The Wieland which has 7.62% sales market share in 2017, is the leader in the Brass Rods industry. The manufacturers following Wieland are Daechang and KME, which respectively has 6.51% and 6.46% sales market share globally.
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Second, the global consumption of Brass Rods products rises up from 2380 K Ton in 2012 to 2840 K Ton in 2017, with CAGR of 4.52%. At the same time, the revenue of world Brass Rods sales market has a rise from 11807.52 M USD to 13683.32 M USD. The reason causes this increase is the growing demand for the Brass Rods products, which is the result of the spurring needs of downstream customers, especially for Automobile.
Third, as for the Brass Rods market, it will still show slow growth, and technological trends in the market will stay stable.
Fourth, market growth for Brass Rods is expected to growth at a CAGR of 3.17% from 2017 to 2022, reaching 16567.95 M USD by 2022.
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